Current Location: Gallery 27 (Glaisher)
Titles
Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge
Maker(s)
Potter:
Toft, Thomas
Entities
Categories
Description
Earthenware dish, slip-coated, and trailed in brown, cream and olive-green slips with 'The Fall' or 'Temptation' under yellowish lead-glaze; reverse unglazed
Red earthenware, thrown, the front coated with dark brown slip, trailed in pale red, olive-green, and white slips, and covered with yellowish lead-glaze. The green slip, where used for broader surfaces and not as a trailed outline, appears to have been cut from a slab of lcay and pressed down with a coarse textiles fabric of which is shows the meshes. Circular with a wide slanting rim and deep well. Decorated in the well with 'The Fall' or 'Temptation'. Eve and Adam stand respectively on the left and right of the Tree of Knowledge which is entwined by Satan in the form of a snake. To the right of Eve is the name 'EVE and to the left of Adam, AD/AMAbove Adam there is a small angel, and a bird (probably an eagle). Above Eve there is a wyvern, and above the tree, a rabbit, a tulip, paired leaves, and a tulip. The rim is decorated with stylized tulips alternating with pomegranates, broken at the bottom by a panel trailed with 'THOMAS TOFT' with five almond-shaped motifs below it. The reverse is undecorated.
Notes
History note: Francis Derwent Wood; Mr Rochelle Thomas, King Street, St James's, London; Mr Stoner, London, from whom purchased for £105 on 12 June 1908 by Dr J.W.L. Glaisher, Trinity College, Cambridge.
Legal notes
Dr J.W.L. Glaisher Bequest
The Temptation or Fall was a popular subject for the decoration of seventeenth-century slipware and delftware dishes This one is unusual in having a dark brown slip ground. The angel, wyvern, and rabbit symbolize good, evil, and lust or fecundity respectively. A dish decorated with this subject on the more common cream ground, dated 1674, is at Temple Newsam House, Leeds.
Mirador deep zoom
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